Delirium (comics)

Delirium is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. She is one of The Endless, a group of beings who embody powerful forces or aspects of the universe, and are much more powerful than gods.^[1]

Fictional character history

Delirium, known to the Greek culture as Maniae, is the youngest of the Endless, yet still older than the rest of existence. She is usually quite short, and thin, and looks no older than a fourteen-year-old human girl. One of her eyes is silver-flecked blue, and the other is green.^[2] Her hair changes style and color constantly, as do her clothes. Her shadow never reflects her shape, and is tangible, like velvet. She is said to smell of sweat, late nights, sour wine, and old leather. Her sigil in the galleries of the other Endless is a multicolored, abstract swirl. Her realm is a chaotic, constantly changing mass of colors and strange objects and shapes, and contains a sundial with the inscription tempus frangit (Latin for "time breaks," a twist on the traditional saying tempus fugit, "time flees"). Delirium travels with a "guardian" of sorts, a dog named Barnabas, on indefinite loan from her brother Destruction. At one point Delirium briefly appears as hundreds of colorful fish.

First incarnated as Delight, she transformed into Delirium for reasons even Destiny does not know. She can be seen as a very young Delight in Endless Nights, a collection of stories about the Endless; a statue of her as Delight can be seen in Destiny's garden in Brief Lives, and her official portrait in Destiny's gallery depicts her as Delight, not Delirium, in Season of Mists. In the last volume of "The Sandman: Overture", Dream passes through Delirium's realm, where it can be read "Delight was sad — Delight went mad."

Delirium is scatterbrained and easily distracted; she often forgets the thread of her conversations, and comes out with offbeat and seemingly inconsequential observations. Todd Klein, the series' letterer, draws her speech as letters which do not quite match in height or line up neatly, against a multi-colored background, sometimes the background color will match the mood she is in (red for anger, blue and green for calm, etc.). Very occasionally she is able, with an effort, to become more controlled in thought and speech, at which point her speech is drawn more neatly and the background fades to near-white. This effort, as she says later, causes her pain. Her speech as Delight in Endless Nights takes the same form, with somewhat orderly lettering and a faint rainbow background. Delirium's personality is often very ecstatic, responding jubilantly to almost any action such as reacting with joy at being held in the mouth of Wyvern the Dragon. Delirium is quick to anger when treated rudely, such as driving a police officer insane for chastising her reckless driving, to threatening to curse Mazikeen into being a half-faced demon madly in love with her boss and making it so, that it has always been like this.

The other Endless (particularly Death and Destruction) seem to be fond of Delirium, to varying degrees, and protective of her. She in turn is affectionate towards them, particularly Destruction. It is implied in Brief Lives that her relationship with Dream was originally much worse, as she was often frightened of him. Dream in turn regarded his sister as a nuisance, however, the events of Brief Lives change their relationship, as he admits that he likes Delirium and is upset when she is unhappy. Delirium in turn grows affectionate of Dream and desperately tries to save Dream in The Kindly Ones by trying to persuade him to join her on her quest to find Barnabas.

In the story "On the Peninsula", the female archaeologist talking to Destruction notes Delirium might have had her heart broken, and in "Fables and Reflections" Delirium mentions she was once betrothed.

In Delirium's story in Endless Nights, "Going Inside", she has retreated into her realm so deeply that no one can retrieve her, save five insane human individuals gathered together by Daniel, Matthew and Barnabas, as only those who are already deeply insane can enter her realm unscathed.

Inspiration for the character

The most commonly recognized source of inspiration for Delirium is that of Neil's personal friend and well-known musician Tori Amos ("...Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that...").^[3] However, in The Sandman Companion, Gaiman stated specifically that he did not meet Tori Amos until several years after the Delirium character had been created.^[4] In that book Gaiman listed the immediate inspirations as postmodern feminist writer Kathy Acker, artist Jill Thompson, and parts of himself. He later admitted that "Delirium was created before I met Tori, but they steal shamelessly from each other."^[5]

See also

• The Endless
• Characters of The Sandman

References